The placebo response doesn't care if the catalyst for healing is a triumph of pharmacology, a compassionate therapists, or a syringe of salt water. All it requires is a reasonable expectation of getting better.

Noorullah Aminya was once a valuable ally to the American military. Then, with the Taliban going after his family, he attempted to defect and spent three years in federal detention. To be granted asylum, he needed to convince a judge that the Taliban rule Afghanistan in full. Which would mean America has lost the war.

Years after the era of the “superpredator,” Taurus Buchanan is still paying for a crime of his youth.

On prison tourism.

“Love you when you hate us,” Rock proclaims with arms spread. “Welcome to the greatest fuckin’ show on Earth.”

The 52-year-old designer finds himself at a crossroads.

A profile of the late Jack LaLanne, “the greatest gym teacher of all time,” who was as responsible as anyone for America’s fitness craze in the latter half of the 20th century.

“Way before Paris Hilton and Kim Kardashian, the enigmatic blonde bombshell was famous for being famous, perpetually driving the streets of Hollywood in that pink Corvette. But her true identity has remained secret all these years … until now.”

Ellen Pao recounts her own lawsuit against Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers.

Maine adopted Kenyan runner Moninda Marube as a symbol of human trafficking’s invisible casualties. But a close look at his case raises hard questions — and illustrates the challenge of investigating and prosecuting trafficking crimes.

For years sheriffs, mental health advocates, families and prosecutors have sounded the alarm about the number of people with mental illness arrested and locked up, many for minor crimes.

A bulletin from our climate future.

For more than 20 years, Judith Sheindlin has dominated daytime ratings—by making justice in a complicated world look easy.

Teens are dying by suicide at an alarming rate. Public health officials call it a crisis. Researchers have identified several clusters nationwide. The survivors in this Arizona community are fighting back.

“For so long, we’ve thought keeping our heads down and being invisible in America might help us gain acceptance — but the recent wave of racist violence has shattered that myth.”

In Taipei, young people like Nancy Tao Chen Ying watched as the Hong Kong protests were brutally extinguished. Now they wonder what’s in their future.

How Service Corporation International corporatized death, driving growth through everything from aggresive acquisitions, volume pricing on caskets and embalming fluid, a “strong flu season,” and pre-selling over $7.5 billion worth of burials.

For decades, the lead actor at an acclaimed storefront Chicago theater beat, groped, and choked his female co-stars in front of audiences, while manipulating them into coercive relationships offstage.

The rise of the “wildly lucrative” herbal incense business, and the downfall of one company.

The fall of Richard Roberts, anointed son and successor of televangelist Oral Roberts, who was fired as president of Oral Roberts University and evicted from the home he’d lived in for nearly 50 years.

An Alabama woman took the equivalent of one Valium during her pregnancy. A few weeks after she gave birth, she became one of more than 1,800 new and expecting mothers arrested under the state’s chemical endangerment law.

A profile of Anita Sarkeesian, who has recieved death threats as she exposes misogyny in the $25 billion video game industry.

A profile of a “49-year-old man whose father has just yelled at him,” Frank Sinatra Jr., a son living under the longest shadow.